Kurchatov grew up in a changing and turbulent Russia. Born in January
1903 at the Simskii Zavod in the southern Urals, as a child Kurchatov
was an excellent music student and played the balalaika with promising
skill.

When
Kurchatov was 11, Tsar Nicholas entered Russia into the First World War
against Germany. Communist Bolsheviks led by Lenin
took advantage of Russia's discontent and launched the October
Revolution in 1917 to depose the Provisional Government which had
taken control from the Tsar several months earlier. In 1918, the Soviet
Union was established and Russia withdrew from the war with Germany but
fought tsarist and foreign forces in a civil war.

Soon after the civil war ended in 1920, Igor Kurchatov entered college
at Crimea State University and studied physics. He graduated with a degree
in only three years. From there he went to the Polytechnical Institute
in Petrograd to study ship building and work as a researcher at the Pavlovsk
Observatory. During his stay there he published his first scientific paper,
in which he investigated the radioactivity of snow: his first contribution
to the growing science of radioactivity.

1903Lenin forms the Bolshevik Party with the purpose
of organizing a violent revolution.